Hi all! Here with a frugal tip that can change how we think about frugality, and sustainability for our planet.
My biggest tip for frugality is to first and foremost think about your time, quality of life and stress in your day to day life. What are the chores and tasks that you dislike doing? Beginning from this point of reference can make frugality not something "more to do" but something that improves your life in addition to saving money. At first, this may seem like a daunting and vague thought, but you can start by breaking it down into individual tasks.
For example, one task that I dread doing in my day to day life is cleaning up trash around the house. I use one day per week to focus on cleaning my home, and when I truly focused on it, I spent a lot of mental energy scanning the house to tidy up wrappers left on tables, cleaning out the fridge of empty containers, cleaning out my purse, etc. Not to mention that when I finished, there was the task of taking out the trash by pulling out the bag from the can and taking it outside, the bag ripping, the trash smelling, or sorting everything to go outside in the recycling bin. Then the outside bins were sometimes overflowing, looking bad and causing a vague stress of everything simply looking dumpy and overwhelming, ad nauseam. Just writing the whole process out makes me feel stressed!
When I realized this, and truly looked at all we were throwing away and recycling, I realized that I could minimize the entire unpleasant effort by reducing the amount of trash we create. Some big things to cut down on were:
- Individual containers for food. Yogurt, drink cans and bottles, aluminum cans for vegetables etc. and frozen foods, wrappers for produce. I bought pyrex glass containers that I now use for lunch, and buy larger quantities of any item that I can then dole into containers for lunch. I bought a canteen for drinks. Not only does this help to save money, there is a lot less trash to deal with when I make food. There's a lot more here involving food, but now when I go to the grocery store my main focus is on avoiding plastic, or buying a larger container so there is less trash when it's all gone rather than a ton of smaller containers. It's unbelievable how much less waste and time cleaning up all the waste has resulted.
- Plastic bags. This is an obvious one, but it's amazing to me how aggravated I was by the task of cleaning up, storing, and getting annoyed by the number of plastic bags around the house. I simply refuse to use them anymore if I can avoid it- using reusable bags and paper bags has allowed me to almost eliminate the chore of cleaning them up. The added bonus is that paper bags can be used for trash cans- one thing I did not think of before is that garbage bags are expensive!
There's a lot more to be discussed on this topic of combining frugality and decreasing household tasks, but these are just a few off the top of my head. I'd be happy to share more in the comments. But I think the best way to think about frugality is to focus on what makes your life easier by also minimizing unpleasant things you do not like to do.
Another example- I also minimize the amount of time I spend in my car driving not only to save money on gas, but to avoid the aggravation of traffic, time spent on car maintenance and cleaning, and filling up at the gas pump!(Seriously- does it always have to be below freezing when I need gas, on top of when I'm already late for work?? Lol). This is another big one I've been working on lately. I thought about this one closely today- I had to take my cat to the vet at 11AM and then get my hair cut in the same area 20 miles from my house at 3PM. Before, I would've driven home and back, wasting 40 miles of gas. Instead, I decided to stay in the area to save the gas, and then thought about what else I could do in the time between. I ended up taking my car to a gas station vacuum to clean, something I'd been putting off for a while, and my kitty was happy to stay in her carrier and sleep while I ran my errands. I sat in my car and read with my kitty on my lap until my haircut time, and I felt really relaxed instead of driving around all day! and 40 miles of gas saved!
February 04, 2020 at 11:20PM
